The Pusher
by Catgirl Kleptocracy
Summary: I didn't intend to become Yamaku's black market for prescription drugs. At least, not at first.


**The Pusher**

**I**

The nurse slides the knee brace off of my leg, but I'm not watching. The medicine cabinet is more interesting. It's lined top to bottom with bottles and boxes of pills. Any kind you could imagine. A full stock in the cabinet, and probably more locked in a storeroom somewhere nearby. If I told you how much it all cost, you'd shit yourself. "Your knee looks just about healed, Suzu," the nurse says, cradling my leg in his hands and running his thumbs up and down my kneecap.

I'm listening, but only just enough to keep the conversation going. The white box in the medicine cabinet with blue stripes on either end is Ambien, 10mg. I take that one myself. The matching box with pink stripes instead of blue is the same thing in 5mg, and I think the one above it with the blue top is Percocet. I'm not sure. I've never actually seen the box. "So I can get rid of the brace?"

The nurse smiles like he's the best buddy I'd ever have. He smiles like that for everybody. Every time. "You don't need to wear it," he says, "but don't get rid of it. If you have a sudden urge to sleep in the wrong place again, you might find yourself reaching for it."

He smiles through the warning, but he means what he says. That's where I stop listening. The nurse believes I hurt my knee in a bout of narcolepsy because that's what I told him. That was horseshit. When I hurt my knee, I was at a concert in the city. Down in the pit. It was one of those hardcore bands that play speedy guitar riffs over the fastest single-pedal bass beat a drummer can manage. When the crowd started moshing, I moshed with them. That's the best part of being in the pit. You can listen to music through your headphones all day long, but you haven't really heard a song until some steroid popping meathead is pushing his hand through your face to the downbeat. That's where you find the rhythm. Get hit on one. Push back on two. Take an elbow on three. Strike on four. Irregular time signatures are a bit harder to find your balance in, but after a few measures you manage.

Accidents happen, but that's what makes it fun. My accident happened on a downbeat. I hit one guy with just a little too much oomph, lost my balance, and planted my foot hard. Before the guy I pushed toppled, I took a blow from behind to the shoulder. My knee stayed forward. The rest of me spun a one-eighty.

You can talk all the shit you want about the brutes and protein chuggers down in the pit while the music's playing, but they're all straight shooters. The dude I pushed stopped the mosh, and the guy who hit me held my hand until emergency services picked me up. They had to carry me off on a stretcher, but even as they lifted—tears streaming down my face—my other foot was still tapping the beat, and my one hand shot up sporting devil horns while the other fell out to the side with a middle finger. It just seemed easier to tell the nurse it was narcolepsy.

After he checks my leg, there isn't much time for small talk before the nurse tells me he's got other patients to take care of. Finals are coming up. With all the stress, students are coming in and out of his office all day long. "It's good for business," he jokes, and I agree. I think the red box is OxyContin.

Sliding off the bench, I bump his fist and say goodbye. His next patient is waiting outside the door. The kid's name is Kiyoshi. We've never spoken. I don't even know if we've ever been in the same room together. Nothing looks wrong with him, but he takes Valium. The big, 10mg ones. Last I'd seen he was running low. He must have been there to get his prescription filled. Good for him. Stay healthy, brother. I smile at him and wave when I walk past. He looks at me doe-eyed and lost, but after a moment of uncertainty he waves back. It's nice knowing more about everybody you see than they know about you.

And I know a lot.

* * *

**II**

The sun has long set before I make it back to my room, and the clock reads 10:30. It'll be an early day tomorrow. I want to sleep. After tossing my phone on my pillow, I slide my coat off and throw it on the mattress. It's a white coat, with down feathers. So long that the bottom extends to my calf. Fluffy as Hell, and warm. It's got this faux-fur stuff lining the hood. Cost ¥20,000 at the department store in the city, and it was worth every bit of it.

My phone starts ringing, and I could have sworn I'd put it on silent. Thing can't shut up for more than five minutes.

I keep my own prescriptions on my nightstand. Five bottles, lined up in a row. The first on the left is Provigil. It's a stimulant. I take it in the day to keep me awake. My phone keeps vibrating on the pillow.

Right next to the Provigil is my Ambien. That's for insomnia. I don't get insomnia on my own, but it's a side effect of the next drug down the line. Prozac. The bass line cuts through the wall of distortion in my ringtone, and I let it play.

The fourth drug is the one that started everything. Xyrem, or sodium oxybate. Promotes healthy sleep, fights daytime drowsiness, and reduces incidents of cataplexy. The master drug for any narcoleptic worth her nightgown. My phone is still ringing, and when I can't stand it any longer, I answer. "Hello?"

I'm surprised when it's my father's voice that cuts through the static. "Hey Suzu," he says. "Thought I'd call to check up on how you were doing. How is everything?"

"Oh, hey dad," I say. With my phone blowing up I hadn't been expecting a real call, but my dad phoned me every couple of nights to catch up. "Not a whole lot new going on around here. Just getting ready for finals."

"Hitting the books?"

"Of course."

I can picture him smiling on his end of the line. "That's my girl."

The fifth capsule of pills sits a little further from the rest. It's not for narcolepsy—at least not totally. It helps with that, but I take it for another problem, too. I grab the bottle before falling to my back on the mattress, and hold it above my face. Vitamin R. "You know me."

My dad laughs. "Unfortunately." There's a pause. Then he asks, "What color is your hair these days?"

My Ritalin prescription is for 25mg a day. Taken in three doses. I try to pop the last one before six every night. Any later and it fucks my sleep pattern. It's easy to take, if you're boring. Just grab a pill and a glass of water and swallow it down. "It's blue right now."

"Blue?"

"Yeah, blue."

I can hear him sigh through the phone, and I laugh. It was easy to pick what color I wanted to dye my hair. His favorite color is blue. I knew he would hate it. "You know, I really wish you'd just keep it its natural color."

If you're feeling a little more adventurous, take the pill and crush it. Grab a straw or roll up a piece of paper or something, and you can snort it. Bumping Ritalin gets the goods to the brain double quick. If you swallow the pill, it can take an hour. Who has that kind of time? It feels more potent, too. "Natural is so boring though. I really like it blue. I think the guys really like it."

"Now you're just being mean about it."

I laugh. "Yeah," I say. "I'm just pulling your leg. Sorry."

"Aren't hair appointments expensive? You know we don't have money for this sort of thing. Besides, I bet guys would be very interested in your real hair. I think the blue puts a lot of people off. Why not show them the real you?"

If you have a syringe, you can IV it. Crush the pill up like you're going to bump it, but dissolve the crumbs in warm water. Once you get it in the syringe, find a vein and shoot. IVing puts it right into the bloodstream. Kicks like a racehorse. Or so I've heard. If you IV, you're dealing with needles. Needles scare me. I don't mess with shooting, but at least it sounds better than plugging. "What if the real me likes to dye her hair blue?"

"Does the real you really like to dye her hair blue, or does she like to keep her father awake at night?"

I think about it for a moment, and shrug. The Ritalin shifts in its capsule, but doesn't make noise. "What if the real me likes to keep you awake at night?"

He laughs, and it sounds like defeat. "Then I guess you'll have to sleep for the both of us."

Plugging starts the same way as IVing, but once you get the drug into the syringe, you discard the needle and lubricate the end. Then you insert it into your anal cavity, slide it forward until you feel it's about an inch deep, and push the plunger. In your anus, there's only a thin wall of cells before you hit a mine of blood vessels. You get the rush of injecting without worrying about all the ways shooting can fuck up your life. "I can do that."

"Alright, I'll let you get to it then."

"Sure thing."

"Have a good night, Suzu. I love you."

Shelving is the same thing as plugging, except with your vagina. "I love you too, dad."

I hang up on my father, and not a moment later my phone is beeping again. It's a text message this time. I check the sender. Another third year from a different class. I open the message and it says, _Meet tomorrow?_

Finals are a busy time for everyone. The teachers spend their hours trying to get students ready for their big tests. The students try to cram everything they've been putting off for four months into a week. The nurse has a line of kids a mile long coming to see him for whatever strain the stress puts on their problems. Everyone under twenty calls me for Adderall.

I always give deals on Adderall whenever big tests come up. Normally I sell it at ¥600 a pill. That's for the 20mg. During finals, ¥1000 will get you two, and with ¥1500 you can have four. I can hardly pick them up fast enough to sell them all. In the last half-hour alone, I've gotten four texts. None of them give details, but I know what they want. With all the meets people are setting up for tomorrow, I'll be running back and forth across campus all day. A day like that, I can make enough money for three concert tickets. Maybe enough to start building toward a new guitar. I could probably dye my hair five shades over.

The phone would keep me awake all night if it could. Even on silent, the glow of the screen when a message comes in is oppressive in the dark. I don't bother answering the text. He can wait until morning. Instead, I shut it off and hook it up to its charger.

My alarm is set for six. That gives me about seven and a half hours of sleep. Good enough. I take my doses of Xyrem, Prozac, and Ambien dry, and undress. It's warm under my blankets, but I can't sleep unless everything is perfect. Even with the Ambien. From my nightstand drawer, I pull out a pair of headphones and an mp3 player.

The headphones are pink, with rows of flowers drawn across the top of the band that end in revolvers. There are white skulls painted onto the center of the earpieces. They're comfortable. Designer. ¥15,000 at the electronics store.

At night, even the softest creaks or footfalls can be earsplitting. Somebody closing their door or flushing a toilet can keep an entire floor awake for hours. I don't deal with that. With a good beat, I can be out in no time. I need music to sleep. Not just any music. My music. The kind where the guitars are tuned to Drop C. The kind with double bass. The kind where the vocalist is screaming, and you have to look up the lyrics on the internet to figure out what he's saying.

I'm dreaming before the first song comes to a close.

* * *

**III**

I didn't intend to become Yamaku's black market for prescription drugs. Not at first. It all started with the Xyrem. Its scientific name is sodium oxybate, but nobody knows what the fuck that means. Hardly anybody knows what Xyrem is—at least not by that name. Walk out into a crowded street, and start asking people if they've ever heard of it. I'll bet you ¥10,000 you strike out. But the only people who call it Xyrem are those of us who actually have to take it. Go back out into that street and ask those same people if they know it by its other name. They will. It's GHB.

I've got enough of the stuff to arm a fuckin' frat house. It really helps me, though. As long as I'm taking all of my pills, I can get down to having a narcoleptic attack maybe once in a blue moon. It still happens from time to time, but it's the exception now, not the rule.

Of course, everything comes with strings attached. Xyrem keeps me functioning, but it's got its side effects. Some of them are standard. Dizziness. Headaches. Nausea. It starts to get fun when you go further down the list. When taking Xyrem, sometimes users will piss themselves in their sleep. That only happened to me once. Some people can see hallucinations. I don't.

The only side effect I've consistently suffered on Xyrem turned out to be the silver lining—sleepwalking.

I heard a story once. Stop me if you've heard it yourself. A woman pops an Ambien and goes to sleep, only she doesn't stay in bed. She walks into her kitchen and downs a fifth of pomegranate vodka. There's nothing left in the house worth drinking after that, so she hops in her car to hit up the liquor store. Ends up totaling the thing. Maybe because she's drunk. Maybe because she's asleep. Doesn't matter. She crawls out of the wreck and figures it's a good a time as any to take a leak, and squats down in the middle of the road. By this time the cops know that something's up, so they come in to arrest her. She takes a swing at the first one who steps close enough. Knocks him square in the jaw. Since hitting an officer is some kind of big deal, they tackle her down to the ground and throw the cuffs on her. Only then does she wake up.

I never did anything cool like that while sleepwalking. As it turns out, I steal things. Whatever I can get my hands on. It was innocent enough. I'd wake up with a pen I found out in the hall, or somebody's door sign. I didn't mean to do it. It was always something small. Something innocent, and safe. Never anything of value. At least, not until I slept over in Molly's room one night, and woke up with a pocket full of Darvocet.

When you arrive at Yamaku for the first time, you start to learn a lot of the things they don't tell you before you actually enroll. When they're trying to entice you to the school, they sit your family down and tell you all about it. Mostly they talk to your parents. You're just kind of there. They pull out all of these pamphlets that tell you how great the school is. How it caters to people with your specific needs. How it's so welcoming. Friendly. How you can get a normal education. And it's wonderful. Everyone eats it up. I can still see the gleam in my father's eyes as he flipped through the pages, asking everything but _where do I sign?_ The pamphlet is beautiful, but it's what's left off of it that really matters.

What the pamphlet doesn't tell you is that at Yamaku, there's a new prescription drug waiting around every corner. Everyone has something. Kid up and loses a leg? Have some Darvocet. Crippling migraines? Vicodin should do the trick. Girl has narcolepsy? Hand her some GHB and send her on her way.

And what the fuck do they expect to happen? A fifteen year old boy loses his legs in a car crash. Loses an eye. Loses his parents. You expect to heal him with a school that markets to cripples? That you can tell him he's welcome, and he'll sing your praises? Show him a friendly smile, and he'll forget he has to relearn how to walk? Forget that he's alone? If I were him, the only think I'd be looking for is enough Ambien to put myself to sleep for good.

At Yamaku, you can find it. Pain killers. Sleep aids. Study drugs. If you can think it, somebody here has it—and you can bet that somebody else is looking for it.

The first time I stole pills while sleepwalking, I gave them back. Molly and I had a good laugh about it. Still do. The second time it happened, I kept two.

I didn't start selling at school. I'm not stupid. The flip side of having so many prescription pills around all the time is that you can't tell what half of them are. You don't take Darvocet for narcolepsy. I knew it was a painkiller, but beyond that I couldn't pick it out from Demerol. Selling to students straight out of the gate would have been a quick way to get somebody killed. Nobody wanted that.

Concerts were my first venue. I couldn't make a profit there, what with the price of admission, but I could buffer the cost of the ticket with a pill or three. The best part about selling at concerts is that nobody there actually needs to take pills, or if they do, I don't know about it. One of the side effects of Darvocet is cardiac arrhythmia. Sell it to the wrong person at Yamaku, and someone has a heart attack, or maybe it's a bad mix with whatever other drugs they're taking. At a concert, I don't have to worry about any of that. It's all too far removed. They're healthy. They should know better. If they don't, it's their own fucking fault.

It was harder easing into selling on campus, but when I realized I'd never make money dealing pills at concerts, marketing at school was the next big step. I stopped going to shows for weeks. Skimped out on lunch. Saved as much money as I could. The first thing I bought was a copy of the DSM-IV.

The DSM-IV is this big manual psychiatrists use to diagnose mental disorders. It covers all the problems somebody can have going on in their head that you could imagine, and quite a few you probably couldn't. Yamaku doesn't admit people for mental disorders, but that doesn't really mean much. I'm not trying to diagnose people. I'm not trying to heal them. I'm just trying to supply their demand.

Besides, you can't get into Yamaku just because your head is screwed on the wrong way, but that doesn't mean you're barred from the gates because you're depressed. Like I said, everybody's got something. That kid I was telling you about—the one in the car crash looking for enough Ambien to suicide? He'll get in because he can't walk. Because his eye is gone. Those legs and that eye were his price of admission. But what they don't say on the pamphlet is that in that moment when his father was blasting through the windshield, and his mother's face was turning to pulp somewhere between the radio and the radiator, and he saw it all because he was sitting in the back seat about to ask the mass of meat and teeth exploding into the dashboard in front of him for a tissue—what they don't say is that after that moment his legs and his eye don't mean shit. It's his head that's fucked.

Hell, all I ever did was fall asleep. They gave me Prozac.

I barely passed science, but that copy of the DSM became my Bible. I read that monster cover to cover in a week. It's got dog tags and bookmarks all through it. Notes scrawled in the margins. When I didn't understand something, I looked it up on the internet, or picked up a cheaper book to explain. One book I found has pictures of just about every pill you're ever likely to be prescribed. Tells you all about it. Effects. Side effects. Safe dosages. Warnings, and what you can and can't mix it with. If the nurse ever took a sick day, they could throw me into his office and nobody would ever know the difference. I can't diagnose things like he can, but when it comes to the drugs, I know everything he does. In a lot of ways, I probably know more.

Once I had the knowledge to sell on campus, I needed the supply. As it turned out, that was the easy part. Yamaku is like a buffet of pills just ripe for the taking. The school runs a tight schedule, so students are out of their rooms for most of the day. Go to class, go to lunch, go to club activities, do whatever else you need to do before going to bed. For most students, the dorm rooms are just places to sleep. And store pills. If you're looking for medication, you can get a long way with just a bump key and a little determination. As long as you have the balls. I do.

It's amazing how much you can learn about somebody just from stealing their prescriptions. Take Kiyoshi for example—that kid who was waiting outside of the nurse's office while I was getting my brace off. He has a little sister. She looks about nine years old. Maybe ten. I see them posing together in all the pictures he's got lined up on his dresser. Kiyoshi keeps his Valium in his night stand, but he keeps the letters he gets from his friends in his desk drawer. He used to play baseball. Turns out, his team is pretty good. They made it to their prefecture finals. You can bet your ass I'll be rooting for the Sparrowhawks this year.

The rest just about fell into place itself. It's easy to find buyers. Some people, if you get to know them, you can just ask. Some people you can practically see it in their eyes. Try standing outside the dorms for a bit, or skulk through the hallways after class, and listen to see who's bitching about the nurse not filling them a prescription. Start an innocent conversation in the cafeteria about your dosage of one pill or another, and look to see who's paying attention. You'd be surprised if you paid a little attention yourself. There are buyers everywhere, because the last thing they don't tell you in the pamphlet is that at Yamaku nobody is happy, and everyone's too scared to admit it.

* * *

**IV**

I'm sitting in my desk chair sometime between downing my Xyrem and my Prozac, and the clock reads 11:45. It's late, but I'm not tired. A busy day is like a series of adrenaline shots fired one after another. The rush only lasts a moment, but bolting from one sell to another is a drug trip in itself. It's almost electrifying. Like a thought jumping a synapse. It's involuntary, and long gone before you ever realize it happened, but when you sit back at the end of the day you can still feel the hair at the nape of your neck charged and standing on end. It's my favorite part aside from the money.

One of my hands is reaching for a CD. The other is pulling another out of my stereo receiver. It's high quality, with hookups for televisions and DVD players. Best one they sell in this city. ¥40,000. The speakers were ¥13,000 each, and sound like magic. I have three. The subwoofer I picked up on sale. It was only ¥8,000. At that price I practically stole the thing.

The new CD starts playing, and I'm celebrating. I stored the money I'd made in a lockbox I keep in my desk drawer. I didn't bother counting it. Growing up, I watched a lot of Yakuza flicks with my father. Every movie had a scene where the boss is handed a case full of money, and he orders one of his goons to go through it and count every Goddamn note in the satchel. I didn't understand it then, and I get it even less now. Once a wad of cash gets a certain amount of thick, you know you've done good for yourself. The details can be sorted out later.

I grab a Prozac, and swallow it down.

There are always headaches, especially on good days, but it's never the money that's the problem. It's people. People are always looking for excuses to get up in your business. To chat. I set out to sell them pills, and they look at me like I signed up to be their buddy. That DSM book, it tells you all of the symptoms and signs to look for when something's broken in that space above a person's shoulders. It doesn't tell you that every Goddamn one of them will try to sit you down so they can unload all of their shit on you.

Take Customer 11. Three in the afternoon, just after class. She calls me up end of lunch, saying she knows it's short notice but needs to meet on the quick. I find her sitting on the bleachers at the track. She thanks me. Then she tells me her little brother took an ambulance ride to the hospital that morning, because all of a sudden he's real sick. She tells me they're trying to figure out what's wrong with him, but all the tests are pointless because at the back of their minds everybody already knows. She tells me she'd rather die than have to watch him go through what she's got, and she's in tears. She asks me what she should say to him. What she can do to make him feel better. What she can do to make herself feel better. I sell her Valium.

I grab an Ambien, and swallow it down.

The CD is half played when it's time to get ready for bed. I leave it running while I step out of my room to brush my teeth, and I can still hear the muted drone of the guitars from the hall when the door creaks shut behind me. By the time I get back there are four tracks left.

Undressing feels like molting. When you're on your feet all day, everything starts to weigh heavy. That shirt you've been wearing gets covered in sweat and grime, and it feels like you have to peel it off of yourself. It feels like what it must be like to wake up from a wet dream when you do. My shirt and pants are thrown into a pile in the corner of my room, and I'm wearing a balconette bra and matching panties. They're pink and lacy, with a small bow sewn into the front of each. Built more for style than comfort. ¥7,600 for the set. The bra I fold neatly and set on top of my dresser. I throw on a white camisole—also lacy, but cheap—and grab my mp3 player.

With the lights off and my headphones on, I can concentrate on the music. I shut my eyes and rest my head back against my pillow. The guitar is muted, but chugging, repeating a rhythm for five measures before switching to a bar in harmonics. The bass guitar plods along in mirror below it, changing to a slap on that sixth measure. The drummer lays down a gallop on the bass. He hits the crash, then three strikes on the snare, but that isn't right. Two of the hits were off beat. I open my eyes.

It's too dark to see, and the music keeps playing. 32nd notes replace the gallop on the bass drum. There's one hit to the crash, matched with one on the snare. A moment later, three more come off beat. The light from my mp3 player's screen fills the room, and I'm looking to make sure it isn't skipping. It's fully charged. Seems to be working fine. Three more snare strikes fall out of rhythm, and it's somebody knocking on my door.

When people don't get enough of shoveling their shit over you in the reasonable hours, they come at night. Some come looking for comfort. More come looking for something they can swallow, or bump, or shoot, or plug, or whatever else the fuck they do with what I sell them. Every one of them is lonely. Nobody has anywhere else to go.

My rule is that everybody gets one free bite at the apple. I'll talk to them for a minute at the door, if that's what they want. If they want to do business, they can come inside. But when I send them off I tell them that if they ever come back to my room after lights out again, I'm cutting them off. So far, nobody's tried for the second bite.

I'm stumbling to the door. I wasn't asleep, but the Ambien is kicking in. Whoever it is outside is still knocking, and I'm cursing them under my breath. My clothes are in their pile in the corner, but I don't bother putting them on. It's too much effort. When I'm halfway across the room, I take off my headphones, and drop them to the floor. The mp3 player lands next to them. I flick the light switch when I hit the wall, and when I turn my knob and open my door, I have to rub my eyes to make sure I'm seeing right. To make sure it isn't just the afterimage of the lamp flashing on burned into my retina. It isn't. "Miki?"

She's standing in the hall, biting her lip and holding her arm. Running her thumb up and down her deltoid like she's trying to rub off permanent marker. "Hi Suzu."

I have to stop for a moment. I've been in Miki's room dozens of times, but she doesn't know that. Even though we're in the same class we've never really talked. She's not a buyer, and as far as I'm aware, she's oblivious. "What's up?"

"Can we talk?"

"Yeah," I say. "What's up?"

She looks embarrassed to be there, and edges her head right like she's peering around me. "Can we talk in your room?"

I nod, and step back. She walks in. Her head turns left and right, checking the place out. I have to shut the door behind her. She looks uncertain, but sits on the edge of my bed and says, "I'm sorry."

"What?"

"I'm sorry."

"What?"

"For bothering you so late," she says. Miki's shaking, and swallows hard. She doesn't seem to notice that I'm dressed like a porn star, or if she does, she doesn't care. "I don't want to be a bother."

"It's no trouble," I say, even though I'd rather be listening to my headphones. "What's up?"

She's breathing heavy—the kind of breaths you take when you're trying to keep yourself from crying—and says, "Molly said you might be able to help me."

The warning klaxons ring in my head, and I'm already thinking of ways to get her out of my room. Miki's family lives below the poverty line. That makes her poor, and that means she can't pay. Of course, there's no way Molly could have known that. "Did she?" I sit next to her. "What's the matter?"

Miki holds up her stump, and I can imagine her whimpering.

"Does it hurt?" I ask, and she nods.

Miki doesn't even have enough money to buy her own lunches. When she got to Yamaku, they gave her this card. Looks just like any debit card you'd see, but it isn't. She can use it in the cafeteria, and she can use it at the convenience store in town to buy things like soap or deodorant, but that's about it. It's not her money. She has to spend it the way they tell her she can. Nobody would know the difference if they hadn't seen the paperwork she keeps in her desk. I ask, "What happened? Did you hit it?"

She shakes her head. It looks more like a shudder. "It's really stupid. Part of losing a hand, I guess. I can see it's gone, but somehow my brain won't believe it. I can still feel it." Looking away, she says, "I don't expect you to believe me."

I believe her. She doesn't know it, but she's already told it to me a hundred times. Molly gets it too, every so often. The phantom limb thing. It doesn't hurt when she gets it, though. She just feels like she has legs again, except the right one is six inches too short, and the left one is two inches too long. She has to pull out a wheelchair those days, or else she's falling flat every three steps. "Can I see it?"

Miki extends her arm and drops her wrist in my lap. The bandage is rough against my bare legs, and all I can think about is when I'll need my next shave. I take it in my hands, running my fingers across the fabric. "There's not much to see," she says. "It's just not there."

"But you still feel it?"

"Hurts like a motherfucker," she says. She laughs, and it almost sounds like she's crying.

I shaved yesterday. I should be good for another day or two. "At the stump?"

"No."

"Further up?"

"Down. Where it's not there anymore."

Miki keeps things in the places you only find searching for pills. She hides a stuffed bear in the deepest corner of her closet, under the pile of extra blankets. His name is Kuma-San. He still has his tag. It's creased and tearing, but written with faded ink in the blank spot is, _Happy birthday to the breathing dream that brightened our sky. Love, Mom and Dad._

"Did you talk to the nurse?" I ask.

"Yes."

"What did he say?"

There's a children's fairytale book stowed behind her dresser. The binding is broken, and there are crayon scribbles over some of the pictures, but she likes the stories, so she pulls it out every once in a while to read her favorites.

"He told me to rest."

I wait for her to continue, and when she doesn't I ask, "Is that all?"

Her lips press together until they disappear. "He just told me to try to keep my mind off of it. To relax."

Miki keeps her diary under her mattress. In the box springs. The background of the front is pink, with the focus on a princess wearing a blue gown and a tiara. She's smiling, and reaching out to her Prince Charming, who's either asking her to dance, or helping her out of a carriage, or kissing her hand. A border of red roses weaves its way around the edges. She taped a notecard to the inside of the cover, and on it she's written, _It's the children the world almost breaks who grow up to save it. _

"And that's all he said?" I ask.

Below that she's written, _One lives in the hope of becoming a memory._

"Yes."

Below that she had written something else, but she's scribbled it out.

"So you came here."

She nods, and still won't make eye contact. She's looking everywhere but at my face. At the floor. At her wrist. At my stereo. "Molly said you were good at making people feel better." At my legs. "That I should come talk to you."

"Molly's right," I tell her. "I am the best." She's in pain, and I don't know how much Molly has told her. I want her gone, but I can't just throw her out. While I don't give handouts, I don't want her to leave feeling like I'd cheated her. Bad for business. "If the doctor ordered you to keep your mind off of it, that's what we'll do."

"How?"

"Haven't you ever thrown a slumber party?" I ask, though I know she hasn't. "You talk about boys."

Miki is desperately in love with someone in our class. She writes about him every night. Describes his dark, messy hair in almost autistic levels of detail. Devotes paragraphs to how he dresses up more than he really needs to, but still manages to look careless. About how smart he is. She taped his school picture next to the notecard inside her diary's cover. "Boys?" she asks, and looks disappointed.

"Yeah, boys." I put an arm around her shoulder. "Whenever I'm feeling down, I call up Molly and we talk about guys we like." Now I'm looking away. "I know it's stupid, but it really helps."

She spends her lunch break with him, and they talk about science. Just about everything he says goes over her head, so he does most of the talking, but she nods every so often and pretends she understands. Every afternoon she goes to the library to dig through the encyclopedias and memorize buzz-words she can throw out when the conversation lulls, just so she can see his face light up when he thinks she gets it. It makes her feel valuable, even though she knows it's a lie. She knows it could never work, but she's too fuckin' retarded and too much of a Goddamn pussy to do anything about it. Her words. Not mine.

"Really?" she asks. She's hurting and out of place, but I can see her force a smile. "Who do you talk about?"

"This stays between us, right?"

"Yeah, of course."

"I think Takashi's really cute," I say, even though his art is shit, and he slashes his finished canvases in his room before throwing them out of sight under his bed or into his closet, and it really creeps me out.

"Really? Takashi?"

"Yeah."

Her smile widens, though it's more wistful than happy. "That's adorable."

"Thanks." I say, "What about you? Any special guy catch your eyes?"

She thinks about him when she touches herself. About how it's his mind that's beautiful, but it's his hands she wants running up her thighs. To rub her so raw that it hurts to sit. She counts the hours day in and day out dreaming of ways she could latch on and cling to something she could never hope to grasp, and knows that he could never understand.

I say, "It's alright. I won't tell anybody."

She says, "Hisao," and I have to stifle a laugh.

"And you say I'm adorable." I'm rubbing my hand on her shoulder. Rubbing it raw. "Miki, that's fantastic."

She looks uncomfortable, and lost. The wistful smile grows, but so does the wetness in her eyes. "Thanks."

"So," I say, still kneading her skin between my fingers. "I guess that means we have to hook you two up now."

She jumps back a bit, and most people would call her surprise a fit of embarrassment. I know better. It's dread. "No," she says, holding her arms up like she's warding me off. "Thanks, but you don't have to do that for me."

Miki's family lives out in the countryside. Dead square in the middle of Bumfuck Nowhere. Her father was a woodworker. He'd do odd jobs for the local farmers, but work wasn't constant. They got by, but only just.

"It's really not a big deal," I tell her. "I'd be happy to help you out."

"No," she says. "It's not that."

Nothing lasts forever. Especially hands. Her father isn't old, but he drew a shit straw. All those arthritis commercials you see on TV, they show these old guys with wrinkled skin and grey hair. They should show some younger guys sometime. They can get it, too. Ask Miki's dad. When she turned nine, he couldn't work anymore. Not like he had. She had to take over doing the parts he couldn't. It was hard work, and dangerous, but they needed the money.

"What is it, then?" I ask.

Her mouth drops open like she's searching for an answer. "I guess I'm just shy," she says.

I pretend to be surprised. My eyes widen just enough to be believable, and I lean closer, gripping her arm. "Shy? You? The baddest bitch on campus?"

She's fumbling for words. It's like she knows she's digging herself a hole, but hasn't realized that I already know how deep it is. "I guess so," she says, and tries to laugh again.

By the time Miki was eleven, she was spending half of her day at school, and the other half sweating her balls off working in her family's garage. That was all well and good in itself. She did what she needed to. The problem was that her family didn't have a working bath, and what they did have was never enough to really get clean. Not if you've been slaving over a workbench all day. Remember how it feels to peel your clothes off after a long day on your feet? How it's like waking up from a wet dream? Try living that. Some people just can't wash that stink off of them, and no matter how pretty you are, nobody's going to overlook that.

"I never would have guessed," I say. "You always seem so confident."

Her breathing is steadier, but it's not because she hurts any less, or feels any better. She's pacing herself. Such a marathoner. "Do I?"

You can't make friends at school if you smell like shit any more than you can make friends working at home all day in your garage.

"Yeah, you do." Miki, who's so pretty. Miki, who's so outgoing. Lost. Desperate. Deceiving. "I didn't think you were capable of feeling shy, actually."

"You'd be surprised," she says, but I'm not.

Her family lived so far out that they had to bus her to another district. When she was fifteen, she started high school. Nobody wanted to talk to her. They didn't want to be near her. By the end of the first week, they were calling her names. When they grew brave enough, and thought nobody was watching, they hit her. She cut school whenever she could.

I move my hand from her shoulder to her head, and caress her hair. It smells like strawberries now, and feels silky, but all I register is the friction. "I guess I would."

When her parents found out she was skipping classes, they hit her, too.

"This is just something I need to figure out on my own," she says.

"I can understand that."

She nods, and looks like she's finished talking, but says, "It just sucks. Seeing him every day."

When they come to my room, they always keep talking. Even when they shouldn't. They'll say anything if they think it will make them feel better. "How can that suck?"

Her second year of high school was worse than the first. One morning, they surrounded her as she stepped off of the bus. They carried cans of spray deodorant and air freshener and hosed her down, laughing when she tried to get away. She didn't.

"He couldn't love somebody like me," she says.

"Why not?"

"It's complicated."

When Miki fed her hand through the miter saw that afternoon in her garage, it wasn't an accident. It was suicide. She wanted to make it as messy as possible. To paint the walls and the floor with herself. Paint the ceiling. She wanted to make a statement. Like slitting her wrist on speed. She's never told anybody.

She says, "It's just not going to happen."

The message she'd written on the notecard that she'd scribbled out said, _We are each our own devil, and we make this world our Hell._

She says, "I don't want to talk about it anymore."

The school picture Miki has taped next to the notecard on the inside of her diary's cover is of Mutou.

We're sitting in silence, and Miki's trying not to cry in front of me. My hand's still brushing through her hair, but she isn't responding, and doesn't notice when I stop. Percocet or Special K would make her arm feel better, but she's angry, dumb, and broke, so I reach for Tylenol. "Here," I say, and drop two of the pills into her hand.

She stares at them for a long while before putting them in her mouth, then swallows them down with my water.

"Are you going to be alright?" I ask.

She looks to her wrist, then up at me—to my eyes—and holds out her hand. "More," she says.

I pour three into my palm, and give them to her. She swallows them all at once. Another awkward silence passes, and I ask, "Do you feel better?"

"Yeah," she says in a way that tells me she doesn't. "I'll be alright."

She says, "I should go."

I walk her to the door, and when I open it she turns around and we hug—her nearly in tears and me in my underwear. She grips my camisole tight enough that I can feel the fabric stretching across my stomach and chest, and all I can think is, I'm glad it wasn't expensive.

After shutting the door behind her I pick up my headphones and shut off the light. The music was left running, and the playlist is a few songs past where I'd started it. I don't know if it's the Ambien or Miki, but I'm exhausted. My bed isn't as warm as I'd remembered it, and lumpy. I turn the music up.

The vocalist's screaming is constant, but it's a new album, and I can only pick up a few phrases here and there. The beat's good enough, but I keep thinking I'm hearing knocks on my door, so I pull off the headphones every minute or so to make sure nobody's there. Nobody ever is. I turn the volume up.

That's why I got the headphones in the first place. To be able sleep. To be able to go for five fucking minutes without having to deal with somebody's bullshit. If they want to bitch and moan and cry about how fucked up their lives are, that's fine. As long as I can't hear it. If I can't hear it, it doesn't matter. It doesn't mean anything. It doesn't exist. I make it louder, then toss and turn for what feels like hours before I black out.

* * *

**V**

Next thing I know I'm sitting in a hospital room. I'm wearing all of my clothes. Even my coat and headphones. The music blares through them as loud as my mp3 player can jam it. Miki is sleeping on the bed. She's reaching out for the space her missing hand is supposed to occupy, like she's trying to hold it. Somehow I can hear her whimpering over the music.

When I look up, I see I'm not alone. There's another me sitting in the chair on the opposite side of the bed. She's naked. There isn't any expression on her face, but it's like looking into a mirror. She extends her arm over Miki, and holds her palm out. She says, "Tylenol."

Somehow I know it's in my left pocket. I reach in, and feel dozens of bottles. I pull out the one she asked for, and put a pill in her hand. She pops it in her mouth, swallows, and says, "More."

I give her another, and she says, "More."

I give her three, and she says, "More."

I pour the entire bottle into her hand and toss the bottle aside. She says, "More."

What sounds like a distorted guitar riff is Miki crying in her sleep. Reaching into my pocket, I grab another bottle. It's Darvocet. I empty it into her palm, and she says, "More."

I empty the Percocet, and she says, "More."

I empty the Ritalin, and she says, "More."

I empty the Valium, and she says, "More."

I'm emptying bottle after bottle. The containers litter the floor at our feet like spent casings. She says, "More," and when I reach back into my pocket, it's empty.

My hands are searching. Coat pockets. Pants pockets. There aren't any pills left, so I reach up and take off my headphones. A rhythm guitar chugs an octave lower than the lead, and it's me crying. I put the headphones in her hand, and she says, "More."

I hand her my coat, and she says, "More."

I give her my mp3 player. My shoes. My socks. My shirt and pants. Bra and panties. She puts them all on, and says, "More."

I look down, and I'm naked. My mascara is smeared all over my face, and when I try to wipe it away my eyeliner smears, too. I'm pleading. "I don't have anything left to give you."

She keeps her arm extended, palm up, and open. The drums blast louder—16th notes on the bass hammering under a four against seven polyrhythm on the china and snare—and tears are streaming down her cheeks. "More."

All sound gives way to the music, and it continues pulsing through the night.


End file.
